The Missionary of Darkness
by Childe Valancourt
Summary: With the arrival of a mysterious man at the barber shop, Sweeney Todd is never the same again. Mrs. Lovett watches in growing despair and hopeless love as the man that she adores drifts ever farther from her. SWEENETT!
1. In Which A Barber Is Solicited

**The Missionary of Darkness**

**By Childe Valancourt**

_Author's note: John Melmoth is a character from the famous Gothic novel _Melmoth the Wanderer _by the Victorian author Charles Robert Maturin._

**Chapter One: In Which A Barber Is Solicited For More Than a Shave**

The pale sunlight glinted off the mirror-like edges of the blades as the man ran a white cloth over them, polishing away the dust and fingerprints that dulled their brilliance. To all intents and purposes, he was but a common barber tending to the tools of his trade. However, there was a gleam within his shadowed eyes that, young though he was, hinted of a fixed determination that was more than the usual ardency of a master barber. To him, the sparks that seemed to fly from the reflecting edges of his blade were the trailing paths of glorious dreams and deeds yet to be committed – deeds that might restore to him, if not the life that he had once led, at least a sense of accomplishment that had been lost to him for so very long – ever since _she _had been taken from him.

So absorbed was he in his work that he did not notice when the door behind him opened and it was only when he beheld a shadow darken the gleaming of his blades that he turned and saw the stranger who stood before him in that narrow attic room.

"Mr. Benjamin Barker, I presume?" the stranger enquired, casting a speculative eye upon the shaving glass, the hulking black chair, and the various other barbering appurtenances that lay all about the room before at last settling his gaze upon the barber himself. Benjamin shuddered, but his fear sprang not from the stranger's knowledge of his true name, the name that he had forsaken ever since his return to London. Rather, it was the nature of the stranger's gaze that caused the young barber's blood to run cold, calloused though he was to most of the horrors that the world could offer. Fiery and penetrating were those dark, considering eyes, as though they had beheld worlds of suffering and torture that Benjamin could only guess at; and the barber felt that, were those eyes ever to flash with anger, the sight would be as blindingly hideous as a savage strike of lightning. The man's countenance and bearing were proud and perhaps even noble and for a moment, Benjamin was put in mind of an engraving he had once beheld in his wife's edition of _Paradise Lost_ portraying Milton's Satan, so striking was the juxtaposition of majesty and misanthropy that seemed to mark every lineament of the stranger's form and figure. He felt a thrilling awe not unlike the same sort of feeling that he had experienced when as a child he had stood in the cathedral and beheld the marble statues of the saints, so pure and devoted was their holiness and sanctity. This stranger, likewise, seemed as pure, resolute and uncompromising in his intentions as those holy martyrs, though his dreadful appeal seemed to be from the entirely opposite side of the war betwixt Heaven and Hell.

"Who are you?" the barber at last ventured to ask.

The stranger smiled with a sort of mirthless amusement. "I am surprised that you do not ask how I know of your true name – the name that you held before you chose to take on that ridiculous appellation 'Sweeney Todd.' However, you show wisdom in refraining from such an enquiry, for that would be entirely pointless. Suffice it to say that I know all of your history, all of your desires, dreads, and despairs. Nothing of you is hidden from me save those few things that God alone can know."

Benjamin's fear gave way to anger; he felt now as though he had become the butt of some bizarre joke. "Leave this place," he hissed. "Or I shall call for the coppers!"

"And perhaps I shall call for the constabulary myself," the stranger returned, his smile now openly cruel. Seeing Benjamin's hand move towards his knives, the man instantly caught the barber's wrist in a grasp as terrible and resistless as an iron manacle. Forcing Benjamin into the black chair customarily reserved for customers, the stranger spoke once again:

"I have not come to fight you but to aid you – if you will accept my aid. I know of your desire to revenge yourself against Judge Turpin. I know also of your despair at ever beholding your wife again. _All of these may be remedied and accomplished _if you will but obey me."

"And what is it that you would have me do?" Benjamin retorted. "This stinks of blackmail!"

The stranger laughed – a terrible laugh that seemed not so much to ridicule a certain action on the part of the object of its amusement but rather to mock the follies and foibles of the entire human race. It was less the laughter of man and more the laughter of mankind's enemy.

"Nothing could be farther from my intentions," he said softly. "But I see that you are not of a mind yet to accept my offer. I shall return when you are better suited to listen to my proposition."

Benjamin rose slowly from his chair. "Then you are leaving now?"

"Certainly not," the stranger replied, with his first look of genuine amusement. "You are a barber and I assume that you are as proficient at wielding those knives for their usual purpose as you are at threatening blackmailers with them? Then please use them upon me."

The stranger seated himself in the black chair and Benjamin set to work. The man was perfectly still and silent under the barber's knife, as though absorbed in his own thoughts. Benjamin handed him a handkerchief and he wiped his face, then instantly rose, brushing away the mirror that the barber offered him as though dreading to behold the visage within. This surprised Benjamin, for the stranger's countenance was not at all repulsive; indeed, he would not have been surprised if in the stranger's youth, he had been considered quite comely. The haggard, sardonic visage that remained, however, was less one of conventional handsomeness and now more an object of fascination; and those fatal, contemplative eyes held the one unfortunate enough to behold them as surely as an iron vice, though their attraction inspired fear foremost above all other emotions.

As the stranger parcelled out payment for his shave, Benjamin at last spoke, his voice trembling in spite of himself: "You can truly bring Lucy back to me?"

The stranger saw the hopeful tears that stood within the barber's eyes and for a moment seemed moved by something akin to pity; instantly, however, he repulsed this aspect of sympathy from his visage and his eyes grew as cold and distant as before.

"Yes," he replied.

"But I was told that she is dead!"  
"She is not dead. Those who have told you so are liars and to be feared."

"And I may trust you?"

"May you trust _anyone _within this world?" the stranger replied with a satiric smile.

"Any man who restores my wife to me is to be trusted," Benjamin replied, clasping the man's pale hand.

"Then you may trust me. As I said, I shall return to you presently to discuss this matter in more depth. Until then, farewell."

He gently extracted his hand from Benjamin's grasp and moved towards the door, gathering his cloak more closely about him as though to ready himself for the wintry coldness outside. Before he had left, however, Benjamin said, "But, sir, you did not tell me your name."

The stranger did not turn, merely replying, "My name is of as little consequence as your own."

"Please – I must know the name of the man who has given me such hope, so that I may mention you in my prayers."

"And so I have inspired you to take up praying again?" the stranger rejoined, turning now to flash a look of such hideous, inhuman amusement that Benjamin paled visibly under the man's glance. "Then know the name of your new benefactor, Mr. Barker – it is John Melmoth!"

And with these words, he departed.


	2. In Which Mrs Lovett Decides To

**Chapter Two: In Which Mrs. Lovett Decides To Investigate; and In Which Judge Turpin Visits A More Than Disreputable Locale**

"Mr. T.! What on Earth is the matter with you? I haven't seen you scrub your face in a month of Mondays and here you are looking like an altar boy on his way to Church!"

Mrs. Lovett, though fond of hyperbole, did not on this occasion exaggerate. The change in Sweeney Todd's appearance coincided directly with the stranger's arrival and departure: his face appeared less haggard and more youthful; his eyes, formerly dark and hollow, were now full of the lustre of hope; and his hair was carefully combed and had achieved its former auburn colour rather than the premature grey that had touched it before. He looked every inch the Benjamin Barker that he once had been – and that he hoped to become once again.

In the fullness of his joy and utterly forgetting the stranger's warning, Sweeney replied, "My dear Mrs. Lovett, exchange those dismal rags that you are wearing for better clothes, for we've certainly cause to celebrate!" And, as her eyes widened with bewilderment, he continued, "That customer of mine who dropped in several days ago gave me a chance to hope that I thought I'd lost years ago. Yes, Mrs. Lovett, yes – he has promised to restore to me my Lucy!"

"_What?_" Mrs. Lovett stared at him and the barber was too ecstatic to notice the dismay apparent in her voice and eyes.

"Yes – fool that I was, I didn't think to ask him how he knew of my Lucy's whereabouts. But I trust him; there was something in his manner that told me that, more than most men, his word could be trusted."

Mrs. Lovett clucked her tongue and shook her head. "Bless your sweet heart, Mr. T., what a babe in the woods you are! A trusty manner is the sure sign of a clever con artist. And how do you know that he ain't working for that Judge Turpin, eh?" Seeing his crestfallen expression, she continued, "Come, love, what was his name?"

Sweeney Todd murmured the name that he had been continuously whispering under his breath and turning over in his mind like a prayer to some succoring angel: "John Melmoth."

"Let me see what I can find out about him myself," Mrs. Lovett said, her eyes gleaming with decision.

"How shall you?" Sweeney asked, watching as she wrapped her shawl more closely about her narrow shoulders and donned her lacy, dilapidated bonnet.

"I've me methods, love, don't you fret," she assured him as though he were but a timid child.

As she turned towards the door, however, Sweeney caught her by the wrist and the dangerous light in his eyes was not childish in the least. "Whatever you discover, do not twist it for your own ends. Tell me all of what you find about him – and tell it truthfully."

More frightened than she liked to admit, Mrs. Lovett hastily nodded and slipped out of the shop without another word.

* * *

In the dim, pale wash of the gaslight, a gaunt, cold-eyed man with features as sharply-drawn as those of a hawk stood motionless as though awaiting something or someone. After several minutes – the duration of which he spent in muttering profanities into the chill air, his breath misting before him like a horde of vengeful wraiths – a stout figure approached him, a crooked hat perched atop its head.

"Well, you certainly took your time, Beadle," the hawk-faced man remarked in a low, rich voice that sounded as though it might have issued from the throat of a tiger rather than that of a man. "Now are you at liberty to tell me what you have planned for this night's entertainment?"

"I should say, Judge!" Beadle grinned.

"Yes, you _should _say," the man – who was, of course, Judge Turpin – interrupted. "You have dropped enough hints all of this day during court recess and luncheon to where I thought I would never manage to turn my attention to the prisoner at the bar. Fortunately, the case was so very clear-cut that it was not a difficult thing to send him along to the gallows in good conscience without further ado. The only thing that pains me is that had the wretched sinner been only a year older, we might have sent him along to one of the penal colonies in South America – but I fear that the statutory age limit is thirteen years of age or older."

"Is that not what you managed to do to young Benjamin Barker?" Beadle ventured with a grin.

Judge Turpin raised his eyebrows long-sufferingly and shook his head with a grimace of distaste. "Please – let us not speak of _that _affair." And then, in a considerably lower voice, "Merciful Heaven, the trials that I have suffered for the fairer sex!…"

Beadle, not one to be deterred from whatever was foremost in his mind, mused insinuatingly, "Ah, my dear sir, it is of the fairer sex that I intend to treat upon this evening."

"Oh?" Judge Turpin queried. "What precisely do you mean?"

Beadle, who all the while had been leading the way at a rapid pace down a singularly dingy-looking alley, now paused triumphantly before the dilapidated door of a tenement and proceeded to tap the handle of his cane thereon. The door opened and a burly fellow with an eyepatch glared with his one good eye at the grinning Beadle and the dour-faced Judge. As though recognizing Beadle, he wordlessly drew back and allowed their passage into the tenement.

Judge Turpin cast a gloomy eye over the singularly disreputable appearance of the apartment. "Beadle," he at last remarked. "Can it be that you have actually invited me to a house of _ill repute?_"

Beadle met the Judge's half-offended, half-amused glance with the beaming confidence of a circus manager whilst also managing to perform the difficult maneuver of winking out of the corner of his eye at a comely, half-naked young lady draped over a nearby bannister. "Now, now, my dear sir, you know me too well to think that I would waste a third-rate or even second-rate brothel on the likes of you!"

"Then what we have here is a first-rate brothel?" the Judge returned, casting the dubious eye of a connoisseur upon the black curtained windows and ebony candles that rose out of tall, golden candleholders at various corners of the apartment. "It looks to my mind like the sort of thing that would result if Aleister Crowley chose to make himself manager of a harem instead of wasting his time in writing Satanist bibles. The place has the atmosphere of a witches' coven and is not at all conducive or harmonious to an amorous frame of mind."

"Yes, I suppose it is something like a witches' coven…yes," Beadle chuckled, undiscouraged by the Judge's uncomplimentary assessment. "But, my dear sir, look at the women! Surely they are enough to inspire a man even if he were in the midst of a churchyard!"

The Judge cast a cursory glance over the various charms that the tenement's occupants offered and was forced to own that the majority of them were not unappealing – a rare opinion for one so jaded as he to express. His doubtful forebodings, however, now took a different turn: "I assume, of course, that the use of the wares within this apartment will all be fabulously expensive."

A harsh cough behind them, sounding like nothing more than a toad's echoing croak, caused both of the men to turn and behold a squat, enormously fat woman wearing a likewise enormous, faded gown. She turned wide, pale, and watery eyes upon the two of them and then said in something of a Continental accent, "Not expensive at all. Only a few shillings this first time. Please – be at ease."

She gestured towards the women reclining upon nearby divans and settees before waddling out of the room as silently as she had entered. The two men watched her departure with a sort of fascinated loathing. Beadle at last broke the silence.

"Well, as I have visited before, I have an appointment upstairs with a certain lady." He winked knowingly. "I shall be down in an hour or so – does that suit you?"

Judge Turpin met his leer with a faint expression of distaste at the man's obvious gaucherie, feeling the usual superiority of the connoisseur over the amateur dabbler. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the eager Beadle and turned his attention back towards the occupants of the room. At first he believed himself to be the only man present; however, he noticed that at the far end of the room, a man dressed in a long, dark coat stood silent and watchful. The Judge unobtrusively made his way towards the stranger and remarked to him in a low voice, "And are you here for the ladies as well, sir?"

"Nay," the man replied, his voice curiously resonant and penetrating. "I would not likely have visited this residence had I not wished to seek you out. You are Judge Turpin, are you not?"

"Yes," the Judge replied. "And you, sir? I do not believe I have had the pleasure of being introduced to you. Have we met before, perhaps?"

"We have never met," the man said and the glance that he cast upon the Judge was full of such a baleful malignance that would have inspired more of a shudder had the Judge possessed more of a conscience. As it was, the man continued, "I know of your practices within and without the courtroom – I know of your tyrannies, your petty cruelties, and your crimes against humanity that have gone largely unpunished. However, I do not rail you for these sins, for I myself have little love for the humanity that you have wronged so greatly."

"How can that be?" Turpin enquired, amused. "Are you not a man yourself?"

"Yes, I am a man," the stranger replied in a manner that suggested that this fact was an endless source of amusement to himself. "But a man may separate himself so thoroughly from the rest of mankind – barring himself both from the ordinary joys and the ordinary sorrows of man – that he is able to view it all with the impersonal coldness and calculating aloofness of a fiend, even if he be not a fiend himself. You surely understand, considering that impersonal objectivity is crucial to every judge."

"Then you accuse all judges as man-fiends?" Turpin returned.

"Come, sir, if we both be fiends, let us be fiends upon friendly terms for the present," the stranger said with a faint smile of irony. "For unless I judge wrongly, we shall meet again under slightly less pleasant circumstances."

"What do you mean?" Turpin demanded and as the stranger turned as though meaning to depart, he seized the man by the wrist and repeated harshly, "_What do you mean?_"

Abruptly he fell silent, though he did not relax his grasp upon the stranger's arm: for at that moment, the door to the apartment opened and the bonneted Mrs. Lovett, with a slightly embarrassed and flustered look upon her face, entered the room.


End file.
